In recent years, due to the interest in the environment and government policies etc., solar cells are being increasingly installed at public facilities, general homes, and all sorts of other locations. Solar cells utilize sunlight, so are installed on roofs or rooftops or other outside locations, but to make effective utilization of the installable area, the practice is often to arrange a plurality of solar cell modules to form an array of a group of solar cells.
Solar cell modules are installed on installation surfaces of roofs or rooftops etc., so have to be strongly fastened to the installation surfaces using fastening systems so that they will not be blown off due to the wind or rain etc. On the other hand, the practice has been to reduce the number of members which form the fastening systems and fabricate the fastening systems at lower cost. Further, solar cell modules are installed on slanted roofs and other hazardous places, so the installation work is preferably as simple as possible.
Patent document 1 has as its object the use of standardized parts for the various shapes, dimensions, or materials of roofs when installing solar cell modules on the roofs of housing and describes a frame structure for fastening solar cell modules which is comprised of vertical members which use a plurality of vertical member parts comprised of a plurality of types of light weight steel C shapes of at least large, medium, and small different lengths and connect these by vertical member connecting fittings to form predetermined lengths, horizontal members which use a plurality of horizontal member parts comprised of a plurality of types of light weight steel C shapes of at least large, medium, and small different lengths and connect these by horizontal member connecting fittings to form predetermined lengths, tile fittings which fasten the vertical members to tiles, vertical/horizontal member fasteners which fasten the vertical members and horizontal members, and solar cell module fasteners which fasten the solar cell module to horizontal members.
The solar cell module fastener which is used in the frame structure for solar cell modules of Patent document 1 is comprised of a lid part and a horizontal member engagement part. The end part of a solar cell module is clamped by the lid part and horizontal member engagement part then the lid and horizontal member engagement part are fastened by a bolt to thereby fasten the solar cell module to a horizontal member. For this reason, when installing solar cell modules at the frame structure, for example a step of fastening bolts was necessary.